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The History of User Interfaces

history.user-interface.io

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Re: The History of User Interfaces

#101

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

wizofaus wrote: post #48
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like what you’re describing boils down to a change in priorities for designs and how the user behavior is measured. Today, it seems to be mostly about recording what users do and then endlessly modifying the UI to extract the desired behaviors. This results in these kinds of layouts where a clean choice takes a back seat and user manipulation takes the front. This is less so the case with actual tools and UI’s…

"how dumb the majority of all users really is" - you could throw in how "dumb" grammar rules are too, given that "the majority of all users" might logically seem like it's singular and hence "is" would be correct, but I'm 90% sure in all cases that you say "the majority of X's", it acts as a plural noun phrase. I.e. it definitely should be "really are".

Majority is a word that can be both singular and plural. When referring to a collective group it is usually singular:

Example: "The majority of HN readers doesn't see any value in reading about fucking grammar in a thread about user interfaces."

When majority is used to describe a collection of individuals, it should be plural:

Example: "The majority of people who care about grammar, also usually care about properly capitalizing and punctuating their sentences."

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#103

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

mikelevins wrote: post #45
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like what you’re describing boils down to a change in priorities for designs and how the user behavior is measured. Today, it seems to be mostly about recording what users do and then endlessly modifying the UI to extract the desired behaviors. This results in these kinds of layouts where a clean choice takes a back seat and user manipulation takes the front. This is less so the case with actual tools and UI’s…

An old friend of mine and I used to amuse each other by writing press releases for a fictional computing company that we called Infernosoft. Its tag line was "Software from Hell," but it also supposedly made hardware. One of its fictional products was the Infernosoft Auto-optimizing Keyboard. As you use it, it measures your usage and optimizes itself in response. It makes frequently-struck keys larger and moves them…

> If that sounds like a good idea to you, then you undoubtedly have a bright future in today’s software market.

Yeah design philosophies matter a lot. I've lately noticed this with a UI/UX person we brought on who came from a web app design background (we are making a standard app for desktop, tiny inexperienced team etc.). It's neither good or bad, it's just interesting seeing someone readjust and realize that they're allowed to make creative decisions based on their gut feeling and not on tangible user behavior data.

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#105

Post by wizofaus »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #101
wizofaus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"how dumb the majority of all users really is" - you could throw in how "dumb" grammar rules are too, given that "the majority of all users" might logically seem like it's singular and hence "is" would be correct, but I'm 90% sure in all cases that you say "the majority of X's", it acts as a plural noun phrase. I.e. it definitely should be "really are".

Majority is a word that can be both singular and plural. When referring to a collective group it is usually singular: Example: "The majority of HN readers doesn't see any value in reading about fucking grammar in a thread about user interfaces." When majority is used to describe a collection of individuals, it should be plural: Example: "The majority of people who care about grammar, also usually care about properly…

Touché!

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#107

Post by tablespoon »

beefman wrote: post #106

I'd love to see GEM, Canon Cat, NeXTSTEP, and BeOS here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_(desktop_environment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS

> I'd love to see GEM, Canon Cat, NeXTSTEP, and BeOS here

That would be good. I'd also like to see something that's at a much lower level, basically an catalog of specific ways of accomplishing specific basic tasks in a particular UI, current or historical. I've switched between different OSes, and each time I sorely miss some very particular thing (e.g. Windows' very useful line-based Home/End key behavior vs. Mac OS's totally pointless document-based behavior). I'm sure even dead-end OS's had very good ideas like these that have been subsequently lost.

My weird dream is that some day someone could use a catalog like that to combine all the best ideas into something that's as close to perfect as possible.

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#108

Post by kristopolous »

masswerk wrote: post #56
kristopolous wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah the TX-2! That takes us back to Sutherland and the famous key frame animator, always good Check out the IBM 2250 John Whitney is using in this 1968 video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jIv-EcX9tUs where he basically invents screensavers for an earlier foray into animation

Regarding books, I've always opted for a book named "Glass" on various display technologies and methodologies, along the lines of "Core Memory" by John Alderman and Mark Richards (who does this amazing CHP photography) [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Core-Memory-Visual-Vintage-Computers/...

wow fascinating. I haven't read either nor have I been to the computer museum in the bay (I know I know ... I should like, be on the board or something)

First-hand industry and machine documentation of the pre-micro era. I've been working on a narrative recently of what I call a time-sharing crash in the early 1970s.

I'm not sure if it existed or not. The Computerworld stock picks index, using their magazines at archive.org, don't really show a modern "crash"(example: https://archive.org/details/computerworld4265unse4/page/n37/...)

I don't know if that's much to go on simply because finance worked differently in that era and was relatively crash free in the modern sense until Reagan's deregulations and 1987's black monday.

I'm not a professional economist and the computer industry was very insular at the time but looking historically there appears to be a cluster of thematic bankruptcies, mergers, acquisitions and industry departures (such as GE getting out of computers selling its division to honeywell in 1970) that I think you can coin the idea of a "time-sharing crash" somewhere in the early 1970s.

It has all the dynamics. A new adjacent industry came out right after it (microcomputers), a migration of industrial centers (this is when boston's route 128 really started taking a backseat to silicon valley) and there were firesale style selloffs in the mid-70s of timesharing systems in the backs of magazines like computerworld from aspiring smaller firms that came in on a hype but were too late.

There were industry darlings of 1968/69 that got washed up by the early 1970s. The 1960s 7 dwarves of Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, CDC, and Honeywell and RCA and GE gave way to the 5-player BUNCH as the last 2 left the industry in 1971. Everyone else basically left over the next 15 years as they Yahoo/Sun'd their warchest in long declines.

All signs are there for the following timeline

1970?-1973? timesharing crash

1981-1982 videogame crash*

1993?-1997? unix workstation crash

1999-2001 dotcom*

2008 - general market*

2022 - crypto*

The things with *s are settled - the unix crash is mostly settled as real, but the time-sharing crash is something I've pieced together and haven't found anyone else mentioning

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#109

Post by guessbest »

mikelevins wrote: post #45
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like what you’re describing boils down to a change in priorities for designs and how the user behavior is measured. Today, it seems to be mostly about recording what users do and then endlessly modifying the UI to extract the desired behaviors. This results in these kinds of layouts where a clean choice takes a back seat and user manipulation takes the front. This is less so the case with actual tools and UI’s…

An old friend of mine and I used to amuse each other by writing press releases for a fictional computing company that we called Infernosoft. Its tag line was "Software from Hell," but it also supposedly made hardware. One of its fictional products was the Infernosoft Auto-optimizing Keyboard. As you use it, it measures your usage and optimizes itself in response. It makes frequently-struck keys larger and moves them…

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#110

Post by Stratoscope »

dredmorbius wrote: post #96
Stratoscope wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After you hit Start, just start typing the name of the app you want to run. You don't need to hunt for it in the menu. Don't worry if there isn't a text box to type into, or if the text box at the top of the menu isn't selected. You don't need to click on it, just start typing. This has worked ever since Windows 7 (or maybe Vista).

If only there were some way to present the user with a form that could be used to type in applications to run. And maybe to help find those applications. And offer a streamlined mode for applications where you just need a quick response where the application doesn't open a new window but just provides a response in the same invocation-dialogue . Maybe apps could even take modifiers or specifications when invoked, so…

Great idea, I'm sure that would console a lot of people who are grieving over the state of user interfaces.
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